Q&A: Lauren Greenfield, director of 'The Queen of Versailles'

Lauren Greenfield had no idea how things would change when she started making her documentary "The Queen of Versailles."

Originally intended to follow David and Jackie Siegel as they built what was to be the largest home in the United States -- a 90,000-square-foot replica of Versailles -- the film morphed into something more profound when David's time-share empire came tumbling down after the 2008 economic collapse. Construction stopped and the Siegels had to reduce their spending -- something the gaudy Jackie had a problem doing.

Question: At what point did you know your subject was going from good to great?

Answer: The turn was pretty dramatic, and it basically happened when they put their house on the market, which was in May 2010. ... The whole premise of the film had been the building of the house. So when they put the house on the market, it was, like, whoa, this is changing. ... I realized when they had to sell their house that their story was a supersized version of what so many Americans had gone through. And that it was really bigger than one family and not really a story about rich people, but really an allegory about the overreaching of America.

Q: At times it's comical.

A: Comical and tragic, I think.

Q: Why did they let you keep filming? Was it a contractual obligation?

A: First of all it was not contractual at all. I think that, as a documentarian, I'm always working thanks only to the grace and permission of the subjects, who can pull the plug at any time. This is not advertising, where people are paid, or reality TV. You have to earn your access and you have to earn your continued access. ...

I think with David and Jackie, I was incredibly fortunate that they did let me stay to tell their story, and I think it was a much more profound story in the end than what we started with in the beginning, which was about building the biggest house in America. I think that they saw their lives as important and saw their stories as valid, in a way. I think David, when he started having troubles with his businesses and his finances, saw his story as emblematic on some level of how America was going wrong. At the time, he felt very victimized by the banks.

Q: And yet, on a smaller scale, he was doing what the banks did.

A: Well, exactly. That was a really interesting thing, ultimately, from my perspective, was that David was on both sides of that. He was both selling mortgages to people, middle-class and working-class people who were buying into this aspirational luxury, and then he was building bigger and bigger and becoming more and more beholden to the banks himself. In his last interview, he speaks to the morality lesson himself, and says, you know, "We have to get back to reality, we have to live within our means. If I hadn't built 28 resorts, if I'd been happy with 15 resorts, this never would have happened. It's a vicious cycle, and I'm a part of it."

Q: At the beginning it's easy to hate them. Less so by the end.

A: As their situation got more and more difficult, it also gave them a chance to show their character. I never would have known what Jackie was made of had this not happened. In the beginning she seems like she cares about money and stuff, and that's the most important thing. You don't know if she married David for love or money.

And by the end you see how much she cares about her family, how she's reaching out to David, that she really loves him and that she's a survivor, and this house and stuff is not the most important thing to her. I think in a way you kind of had to take away the stuff, and it also might have been an evolution that happened in the course of going through this experience, that kind of brought her to a different place. I felt like there was kind of a silver lining.

Jacqueline Siegel and director Lauren Greenfield pose for a portrait during the 2012 Sundance Film Festival at the Getty Images Portrait Studio at T-Mobile Village at the Lift on January 22, 2012 in Park City, Utah.